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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

beautiful days / children helping children

These are simply beautiful November days. Frosty mornings shrouded in fog, pale sun quickly breaking through and making the last golden leaves sparkle, and a big moon bright when evening sets all too early. There is such a clear quality in the light right now....

It's getting bare yet there are still colors and flowers and leaves. The earth is quieting down and we are slowly getting into the pre-Advent spirit here. For us it always starts with giving on November 15th.

In our house the 15th has become "Christmas in a Shoe Box Day", the day the children send off little boxes of Christmas cheer and goodness to other children someone in the world who need a gift. We started getting involved in this a couple years ago when the pick-up point for the shoe boxes was in my son's preschool. Now we are addicted! It is so much fun. We do it like this: each of our children "sponsors" a child her or his age. Together we go shopping for toys, school supplies, candy, personal items etc. My kids pick out what they want to give "their" child. Then we pack the box up and send them on their way with blessings and hopes. It's an international organization and you can read about it (German) here or (English) here.

I'm sure next year we'll be doing it again!

We always are sure to include a personal greeting. This year the children made paper children holding hands. Last year I made a scrapbook page about it for our family book. It was one of those occasions that I really wanted to remember but didn't have a great photo (background was not nice) so I ended up cutting the children out and I kind of like the fun way it turned out.

Actually I have not been scrapbooking recently but I know there will be a week when I get obsessed with it again and can't concentrate on anything else until I get a stack of new pages into my album! I promise to start showing more of my favorite layouts for you here on my blog.

I love this Karen! We do the same thing, it's probably the same organization, this will be our 6th year to take part and my children love it too. Our boxes are packed up and ready to go. How fun that you added it to a scrapbook, what a sweet mama you are. My children will be trying to piece together their memories when they're older I'm so bad at taking the time to document... at least I feed them from time to time ;)